This Week’s Love/Hate Relationship With Black Pop Culture

In case you missed it, Gary Dourdan was involved in a domestic violence situation – and he’s the one who got beat up. The actor’s girlfriend, Maria Asis del Alamo, was booked on a misdemeanor domestic battery charge after police arrived to their home and found Dourdan covered in scratches. The buzz around this story focuses on the disparity in their sizes and the insinuation that he’s a punk for getting beaten by 5’2, ninety pounds soaking wet female. I’d rather chalk this up to the actor’s persistent drug problem that led to his dissmissal from CSI in 2007. Lately I’ve really been hating what drugs do to people. Enough is enough! There’s really no good that can come from the rest of us pretending that addiction is a character flaw and not a disease. By the way, I used an old picture just to demonstrate that as much as we sweated Shazza back in the day , in retrospect his locs were kind of a mess, weren’t they?

My now second-favorite Jackson is hitting the talk show circuit to promote Why Did I Get Married Too (I lack interest somehow) and True You, her upcoming book about weight loss, which I totally want to read because if anyone’s enduring weight issues can provide insight on yo-yo dieting it’s her’s. After a bunch of customary schmoozing last night on “The Tonight Show,” Janet eventually talked about the body drama she went through on the set of Good Times and how they even wanted little Penny to lose weight…?

I miss Janet and love her enough to read that book. We’ll see about the movie, though.

The Tiger Texts? All I can say is, don’t talk about it, be about it. If your fingers are small enough to do all of that typing all fast then I don’t want none anyway. Hate.

The universe must be telling me to read more because I can’t wait to see what Todd Bridge’s upcoming tell-all book “Killing Willis: From Diff’rent Strokes to the Mean Streets to the Life I Always Wanted,” will be about. The former child actor has already mentioned talk of a fling with Dana Plato, molestation by his publicist, and of course the his drug problems. Aside from being juicy maybe the memoir will shed more light on drug addiction. I know he’s been sober for almost twenty years, but am the only one who finds it sad/funny that he was present at Corey Haim’s intervention?

Maybe I should have called this week’s installment “Drugs Are Bad,” because I am so mad at DMX for getting arrested again, this time for violating his probation by using illegal drugs. The twist? Dr. Drew Pinsky has petitioned the court to let him appear on Celebrity Rehab instead of serving his six months in jail. To that I can only say HOO-RAY! I’d love to see Dr. Drew get to the bottom of DMX’s problems because I have a feeling that he’s surrounded by sycophants who don’t understand that mental illness and drug addiction are diseases and instead figure X is just “a little bit touched.”

Eddie Winslow and Superhead are getting a divorce. Sigh.

It’s not very often that I get excited enough to post the trailer for an upcoming film but I cannot wait for Just Wright starring Queen Latifah, Common, and Paula Patton. The story sounds fun, the dialogue seems great, and everyone in the cast is attractive and enjoyable. Ok, I’ll admit that I haven’t found Queen Latifah particularly believable in a heterosexual love story since she played Khadijah on Living Single, but if anyone could spark chemistry with her on-screen it would be a masculine-but-soft cream puff like Common. Check out the trailer:

I have an ex who looked and acted just like Shazza. And I was just like Freddie when I was around him, followed him around like a little puppy dog. I haven’t seen him in years, but I imagine him to be just like Gary Dourdan is today.

hey Ms Thembi,
For some reason I find your post so damn depressing. I am mad as hell not just at the lost talent but the lost souls. Drugs is literally just stealing peoples lives and very souls and we can’t seem to do anything about it. I seems like EVERY DAY there is another person dying from or losing their money and livelihood to drugs and drug related activities. I don’t just mean stars either, they make the news because of their fame or past fame but in real life people are just succumbing to this lifestyle…
I just don’t know what to say {{{deep sigh}}}

Sometimes I wonder if it’s the chicken vs the egg theory… are some of these people experiencing domestic violence because of the drugs, or have the drugs cause them to beat each other down? I agree with Regina, the incredible amount of lost talent is sad, but the lost souls are even worse.

# 20 March 2010 at 10:53 am

Leo the Yardie Chick said:

I had no idea anyone married Superhead. What about that sounded like a good idea?

*sigh* Enough with the drugs already, people. How many examples do they need to show that this stuff will either kill you, or outright ruin your life?

# 20 March 2010 at 7:52 pm

katieM said:

Queen Latifah’s movie looks so good to me! I can’t wait. And wow, Common seems to have enough manliness for the role. I’m not a Tyler Perry fan, so that movie just looks like more of the same.

# 25 March 2010 at 7:06 am

michelle m. said:

Awwww…I never heard of the queen latifah/common movie until now. I WANNA SEE IT! (and I’m really not a movie person, but it looks sweet).

# 30 March 2010 at 9:25 pm

Nicole said:

Yeah, I could watch Common read the phonebook and call it a perfect Tuesday.